Charged as an adult: Forrest Day, 19. Suicide.

UPDATED 2/2/2012:  

The answers to those of my questions below which can be derived from criminal and court records are in this new article by the Arizona Republic. I'm choosing not to re-print it here because the article positions Forrest's behavior problems in a way that seems to justify her being sent to prison in the first place...like she was just a "bad girl". I don't accept that premise. She acted out the way children do when troubled...and troubled children, in my book, do not belong in adult prison.

So, if you plan to contact either the judge or prosecutor in this case, do check out the AZ Republic article linked to above to see just the surface of what they were looking at, through the eyes of the criminal justice system. Before you make up your mind what to write, though, read the note below from this friend of Forrest's family as well...

    

  Forrest Day, at 16.

UPDATED 9/31/12: 

At the age of 16, despite being too young to be trusted to drink, drive, smoke, vote, or even get away with skipping school, Forrest Day was prosecuted as an adult for the death of her 8 month old baby. As recounted in the article below, she put her son in the bathtub then got distracted elsewhere in the house by writing poetry - behavior characteristic of a child. It's not even as if she went out partying and left him home alone, beat or shook him, or even filled up the tub.

It doesn't appear that Forrest was even accused of intending to hurt her child. You don't have to will a person harm in order to be charged with negligent homicide, of course, though I suspect they hit her so hard to begin with in order to coerce her into a plea deal on the felony child abuse charge - which I also think was a stretch in this circumstance. 

This case may not be entirely a matter of Andrew Thomas' office overreaching again, though. It looks like the state law requires prosecutors to file charges in adult court when certain felonies and violent crimes are involved - when that happens, though, it appears as if that court then has discretion over where the case is heard.

In any event, Forrest's prosecutor was Suzanne E. Cohen. Her office with the Maricopa County Attorney is at: 301 W. Jefferson St., Phoenix, AZ 85003. She's just applied to be nominated as a judge, so this would be a good time to write to her about her take on charging children like Forrest as adults (according to the DOJ's research, it doesn't reduce juvenile crime). Cohen just helped prosecute the Baseline Killer and got a few death sentences, so there's a good chance she could end up on the Superior Court bench in the next couple of years. 


Forrest was sentenced to probation, and then to prison, by Michael Kemp, a judge from Juvenile Court. I can't tell from the records who actually made the decision to let the state prosecute her as an adult, though. If you have questions about why he did what he did and what he thinks about charging children like her as adults - kids with no criminal record or intent - direct them to him. He can be reached at:
 

Northwest Regional Center (NW)

14264 W. Tierra Buena Lane
Surprise, AZ. 85374

(602) 372-9400

Within less than 6 months of being charged, facing decades in prison if convicted on both counts, Forrest pled guilty to class 3 felony child abuse. Here's the news article on her plea. In return, the state dropped the homicide charges and she was sentenced to 7 years of probation; upon entering her plea she was sent home with her parents and essentially ordered, ironically, to resume the life of a "normal" teenager. 

For those of you who have never been on probation or parole, it's not as easy as you may think to abide by. Forrest violated hers within a year, just before her 18th birthday. I don't know what she did to get into trouble with the court - she apparently wasn't charged with a new crime. She did get pregnant again, though, and wanted to keep her unborn daughter - forbidden by the judge. She was only allowed to see her at the hospital once she was born.

Forrest was committed to the custody of the AZ Department of Corrections on November 10, 2010, soon after having her second child. For breaking her probation, Kemp gave her 3 1/2 years in state prison on the original child abuse conviction. For neglecting her child at the age of 16, the rest of us condemned her to live - and die - with the guilt and stigma of killing her son as if she had intended to. We just can't seem to dole out enough punishment in Arizona to satisfy the electorate here, and it looks like we're letting the legislature get away with refusing to address sentencing reform again this session, so we do share some responsibility here...


Sadly, Forrest committed suicide on January 27, 2012 at Perryville Prison on the maximum security yard, Lumley. She was only 19 years old. Hers was one of three prison suicides last week, in fact; she was the youngest. Our condolences go out to Forrest's parents and other loved ones. I can't think of anything more devastating than surviving the loss of one's child.

This weekend a friend of Forrest's family left a comment at the bottom of another post, speaking to the beautiful soul she knew her to be, that is better placed here: 

-------------from Arizona Prison Watch--------------

Tina Schwindt has left a new comment on your post "Criminal Damage and Deaths in Custody: Letter to t...":

"I am a close personal friend of the Day family and I want to thank you for trying to bring this tragedy to the people's attention. Forrest wasn't a bad person, she had a lapse in judgement, just like millions of other 16 year old kids do every day. She was funny, kind, loving, artistic and so much more. I believe that the state wanted to use her as an example to other young mothers and it backfired horribly. This young girl never should have been put behind bars in an adult prison with the women who actually committed murder freely and willingly. She did not take her babies life intentionally, it was just a horrible accident. 

Accidents happen every day to a multitude of people, for instance the mother whose 2 year old baby got out of the house 4 years ago and tumble onto Thomas road and was hit and killed by a car. The mother had several children and didn't notice the baby gone until it was too late, but she never got charged for any crime. 

I want people everywhere to know that Forrest was an amazing young woman who wanted to go to culinary school to make her life better, but she will never get that opportunity now. I also wanted to say that Forrest gave birth to a beautiful baby girl right before she was incarcerated and the baby is the spitting image of her mommy. The family has custody of the baby, and I can only imagine that they feel very blessed by this wonder born from tragedy. Thank you so much for letting me speak my mind. You are doing a wonderful thing here!"

 

----------from the Arizona Republic archives (2009)--------

 

Police: Teen mom was writing poem when baby drowned

Jackee Coe

May. 6, 2009 

The Arizona Republic

A 16-year-old Avondale girl facing felony child abuse and negligent homicide charges was distracted by writing poetry while her 8-month-old son drowned in the bathtub, according to a police report.

Forrest Day, pleaded not guilty at her arraignment Wednesday, following her indictment on April 23. Day will be tried as an adult and is due back in court June 18.

 

Day's son, Elijah James Day, drowned about 3:30 p.m. Feb. 21 after she set him down in the bathtub, turned the water on with the drain unplugged and left the room, according to the Avondale police report.

Day told investigators she was looking for a towel but got sidetracked with poems she was writing, the report states. After checking on Elijah after about five minutes, she said she went into her bedroom, saw her poetry book and started reading some old poems. She said she was gone for about 20 minutes this time.

Day said she went from her room to the living room, to her sister's room, and then outside on the back porch trying to find a quiet place to write. She eventually went into her parents' bedroom and closed the door behind her, according to police documents.

Day's 9-year-old brother and his friend were playing video games in the living room when the friend heard the water running in the bathroom and told her brother. Her brother went to the bathroom and found Elijah floating face down in the water.

He pulled him out of the water and yelled for his sister, the report says. Day tried CPR but when it didn't work, she took him across the street to a neighbor's house. The neighbor called police and administered CPR until police arrived.

Elijah was unresponsive to attempts to revive him, according to the report. He was airlifted to St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, where he was pronounced dead at 4:36 p.m.

Day was "hysterical and crying," the report states. She told police she gave Elijah a bath almost daily but this was the first time she left him alone in the bathtub.

She faces one count of Class 2 felony child abuse, a dangerous crime against children; and one count of negligent homicide, a Class 4 felony.

Sentencing Reform: Arizona's time has come.

This is exceptional, in-depth coverage by Bob Ortega at the Arizona Republic. He and Mary K. Reinhart have been doing outstanding research on our state's collapsing public service systems and incarceration crisis - read them, leave comments at the sites of their original articles, and write a quick note to the Republic to commend their coverage of these critical issues. Ask them to go one step further, now, and get inside the prisons where some of our most vulnerable people are dying violently.


Send a letter to the editor with their online form.

By US Mail: Letters to the Editor, The Arizona Republic, P.O. Box 1950, Phoenix, AZ 85001.

Letters may also be faxed to (602) 444-8933.

Homes not Jails
Phoenix City Hall
December 22, 2010

---------------from the Arizona Republic-------------

Arizona prison sentences among toughest for many crimes

Bob Ortega

Oct. 9, 2011 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

Whether it's putting a shoplifter behind bars for three years or a child-porn user away for 200 years, Arizona imposes among the longest, harshest sentences of any state in the country for a wide variety of crimes.

Politically, that has been popular, but the practice carries a hefty price tag. This year, the state will spend more than $1 billion to keep prisoners behind bars, and that figure will balloon if Arizona carries out plans to build or contract for as many as 6,500 new prison beds over the next five years.

Many other states, to cut costs as budget deficits have soared, have adopted sentencing alternatives over the past decade that have slashed their prison populations.

They diverted non-violent offenders into drug- or alcohol-treatment programs, increased tightly supervised probation, and took other steps that experts say save money while helping cut the likelihood that convicts will reoffend.

Nationally, crime rates have been falling for decades. Even with more convicted criminals on the street, many of these states have seen their crime rates fall as far or farther than in Arizona, where the prison population has climbed 50 percent over the past decade.

But those calling for similar reforms here have been unable to persuade Arizona's political leaders to give up their tough-on-crime stance.

"We incarcerate 40,000 people; Washington has a slightly larger population than Arizona and it has 18,000 prisoners," says Rep. Cecil Ash, a Mesa Republican and sentencing-reform advocate. "Bottom line, we're spending a huge amount of money when we have better alternatives."

But Ash has found almost no support in his own party for changing sentencing.

Former House Speaker Kirk Adams says he and most other legislators agree with prosecutors that Arizona's tough sentencing laws are the reason for the state's falling crime rate.

"If we're talking about having some people not go to prison, or letting some out earlier, it's natural lawmakers would want to proceed very, very carefully," he said.

Over the past three decades, Arizona's population has leapt one and a half times to just under 6.4 million people. The state's prison population has grown five times as fast.

In 1980, one out of every 749 people in Arizona was behind bars. Today, it's one out of 159, based on U.S. Census and Arizona Department of Corrections data. Arizona has the highest proportion of people in prison of any state in the West and ranks sixth in the country. The U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration in the world.

One big reason for the high rate across the country, and especially in Arizona, is a series of "tough on crime" and "truth in sentencing" measures that lawmakers began adopting in the 1970s and continue to enact. Those laws have sent more people to prison for longer periods of time.

Arizona politicians from former Gov. Fife Symington to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio have campaigned on the belief that putting more bad guys away for longer keeps communities safer.

But the numbers don't back that up. Despite a high incarceration rate, Arizona also has had some of the highest crime rates in the country, averaging between sixth and seventh among all states and the District of Columbia over the past decade, according to FBI data. A study soon to be released by the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission will report that Arizona's murder rate rose last year, and that rape has risen over the last decade, even though both those rates have fallen nationally.

Over the past few years, some two dozen states - including the traditionally punitive state of Texas - have passed sentencing and other criminal-justice reforms, many specifically aimed at cutting prison populations.

Reforms include scaling back or eliminating mandatory sentences, giving judges more discretion in sentencing, creating commissions to study sentencing practices, and adopting so-called "evidence-based practices." These policies encourage probation for non-violent offenders, electronic monitoring and community-based rehabilitation programs. Criminologists credit such reforms for reducing crime and prison populations.

But the Arizona Legislature has moved mostly in the opposite direction, rejecting efforts at sentencing reform. Last session, after being lobbied by Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery and other prosecutors, leaders buried bills by Ash and another member of their own Republican majority who proposed reforms - creating a sentencing commission, expanding rehabilitation practices - similar to those adopted in Texas, Michigan, Kansas and New York. They also rejected a bill for a study of sentencing reforms. Arizona prosecutors and most Republican lawmakers insist that tough sentencing laws are essential to fighting crime by ensuring violent criminals get long sentences that keep them out of society.

Lawmakers did pass bills that increased sentences for child prostitution and sex crimes involving children, and created new crimes relating to human smuggling. Sponsors said the public supports tough measures for such crimes.

Spending on prisons rises

But putting more people in prison for longer is costly. Last year, as the state slashed spending on education, health care and almost every other area, the Department of Corrections was the only agency to see a budget increase.

In 1979, the state spent 4.3 percent of its annual budget on Corrections; this fiscal year, Corrections will take 11.2 percent of the budget. By contrast, over that time period, Arizona's spending on higher education dropped from 19.1 percent of the state budget to 10.5 percent.

The Corrections Department plans shortly to award one or more contracts for up to 5,000 more private-prison beds. The state's auditor general projects that those contracts will cost an additional $585 million over the next five years. And if further planned expansions to add 1,500 more prison beds go ahead, those would add nearly $400 million more in spending over the next five years, according to the auditor general.

Those kinds of mounting costs have led leaders in other states to push for sentencing reforms, saying it isn't a question of being soft or hard on crime but of being smart on crime.

"We recognize the need to have public safety, but at the same time we have to make the best use of our money," said Texas state Rep. Jerry Madden, who spearheaded a series of bills in his state that diverted people from prisons into mental-health, alcohol- and drug-treatment programs, increased community supervision and the use of electronic monitoring for non-violent offenders. Those changes are credited with reducing the need for thousands of prison beds.

"When I arrived at the Legislature, I had one message from my speaker: 'Don't build new prisons; they cost too much,' " Madden said.

The new treatment programs and other measures cost $241 million but saved far more. Texas scrapped plans to spend $523 million on new prisons in 2008 and 2009, and saved $36 million a year it had been paying to house prisoners in county jails. The changes also helped cut the recidivism rate. Madden notes that treating underlying mental-health, drug- and alcohol-addiction issues helps remove some of the triggers that lead to crime.

Shifting priorities

Travis Pratt, a criminologist and criminal-justice professor at Arizona State University, believes cost issues will eventually drive change in Arizona, too.

"Most states that have started to back off from the get-tough approach haven't done so because of some ideological shift; they've done so because they're broke," Pratt said. "They don't want to be less punitive, but they recognize that they've hit the fiscal limits of that agenda.

"Arizona will eventually hit that. It will become too expensive to maintain one of the highest incarceration rates in the nation."

While "policy makers found long ago that there's political capital to be gained by being tough on crime - the same philosophy that gets Arpaio elected and re-elected - that's not at the top of the political agenda anymore," Pratt said. "Now it's all about the economy, jobs, health care. Crime is slipping down the list, and policy makers won't get the same political capital out of the issue as they did in the past."

Others aren't so sure.

"We see a lot of pushback, even against things we know will work here, because right now the system is very favorable to prosecutors . . . and the benefits of sentencing reform are more difficult to see, so politically it's a tough sell," said ASU law professor Carissa Byrne Hessick, who has worked on sentencing-reform proposals.

"The prosecutors in this state seem to be well-organized, and they're very opposed to any sentencing changes," agreed Donna Hamm, a prison-reform activist and former state judge. "Judges don't have a lot of power over the length of sentences . . . there are a lot of mandatory minimums that have to be imposed. So the prosecutors are really driving that engine, because they decide which charges will be filed and which ones won't be."

Kim MacEachern, staff attorney for the Arizona Prosecuting Attorneys' Advisory Council, agrees with Hamm on one point: Prosecutors see no need for change.

"When we look at who is in prison, we believe the right people are there," she said. "And that has to be playing a role in the decrease in the crime rate."

Most criminologists, however, don't agree with that assessment.

"The research shows that incarceration is way overrated in terms of its ability to control crime. The ups and downs in the crime rate have a low correlation with incarceration rates," said Mona Lynch, director of the Center in Law, Society and Culture at the University of California-Irvine. Five other criminologists interviewed for this story agreed with Lynch, saying that scores of studies have shown that it's possible to lock up fewer people while still cutting crime.

A 2010 analysis of more than 400 studies for the National Institute of Corrections found not only that the longer the sentence, the more likely a convict is to reoffend, but that rehabilitation succeeds far more often in a community rather than prison.

Tougher penalties

Arizona has had a well-deserved reputation for handing down tough sentences since territorial days. But beginning in 1978, state lawmakers began to adopt an ever-wider variety of laws that increased the number of crimes, imposed harsher penalties and reduced the ability of judges to use their own discretion in handing down sentences or revoking probation.

Much of this coincided with nationwide sentencing trends, but as Lynch, the criminologist, describes in her book, "Sunbelt Justice," Arizona led rather than followed in tightening the screws.

These changes included, in 1978, presumptive sentencing, which imposed specific ranges of sentences for each type of crime. The idea was to make sentencing more consistent, but the change also put more power in the hands of prosecutors, who decide what violations to charge. Another change, mandatory sentencing, imposed specific longer sentences and eliminated the option of probation for violent crimes, sex offenses, repeat offenses and certain drug and DUI crimes.

Under those laws, in 1988, Jay Martin Jonas of Bisbee was sentenced to 25 years in prison for selling a marijuana cigarette, for a dollar, to a 14-year-old juvenile delinquent. He got 22 1/2 years more tacked on for agreeing to fence a handgun the boy had stolen. Jonas, then 21, had a prior felony, so the two sentences were imposed consecutively without any possibility of parole.

On appeal, Arizona Supreme Court Justice Robert Corcoran, writing for the majority, noted that Jonas' sentence "is among the harshest in the nation," but he upheld it. In his dissent, Justice Stanley Feldman replied, "Actually, it's the harshest. Arizona is the only state that would or could incarcerate a first-time seller of one marijuana cigarette to twenty-five years in prison without parole to be served consecutively to any other sentence imposed."

Jonas' attorney eventually won him some relief. He was released last year, after serving 22 1/2 years in prison.

"Sometimes," said Feldman, now in private practice, "common sense tells you a thing is so unjust it violates the Eighth Amendment," which bans cruel and unusual punishment. He said Arizona's criminal code can and does result in sentences that are "counterproductive, unjust and create too much expense."

Prosecutors wield more power

In 1993, Arizona adopted "truth in sentencing" laws. These abolished the ability of parole boards to award early release for new crimes. They required offenders to serve at least 85 percent of their sentence before being eligible for community supervision; and required serving 100 percent of the sentence for many felonies. Before, inmates typically had been eligible for parole after serving from half to two-thirds of their sentences. While most states adopted "truth in sentencing" laws for violent crimes, Arizona was one of only four to impose the rules on non-violent crimes.

Another change greatly reduced the option to let sentences run concurrently, as most states allow, when someone is convicted on more than one charge. It made consecutive sentences the default option and mandated them for certain crimes, including most crimes against children.

For Phoenix teacher Milton Berger, who was convicted in state court in 2003 on 20 counts of possession of child pornography, each with a mandatory minimum of 10 years, the consecutive-sentencing rule put him behind bars for 200 years with no parole. If Berger, now 61, reaches the median life expectancy for a man his age - 81 - Arizona taxpayers will spend more than half a million dollars to keep him in prison. Berger took his chances at trial because the plea bargain he was offered - 40 years with no parole - would essentially have been a life sentence.

In contrast, Deewayne Bowdoin of Willcox was prosecuted in U.S. District Court in Phoenix for possession of child pornography last year. He received five years in federal prison, "a just sentence for his role in the sexual exploitation of children," said then-U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke.

Critics say Arizona's mandatory-sentencing laws, meant to provide consistency, instead have moved discretion out of the hands of judges and into the hands of prosecutors, giving them enormous leverage to pry plea bargains from those accused and resulting in huge disparities.In the last fiscal year, plea bargains accounted for 95.6 percent of all felony criminal convictions in Maricopa County; only 1.6% of felony criminal cases filed went to trial, according to court records.

"Sentencing is nearly all done by plea bargaining instead of before a judge in open court," said Pima County Public Defender Robert Hirsh. "The deal is always driven by the risk of a higher sentence."

In 2009, William Johnson was charged in Maricopa County with felony shoplifting. To avoid a sentence of 10 years at trial, he agreed to plead guilty and received three years in prison for stealing a $3 bottle of wine. The plea bargain was considerably longer than the norm for similar crimes in most states, say defense attorneys.

States cut costs, decrease crime

While many states went down the same sentencing path as Arizona, in recent years most have walked back from such practices. Even the few states with higher incarceration rates than Arizona, such as Mississippi and Texas, saved money by cutting prison populations while also seeing deep drops in crime.

New York cut its prison population by 20 percent over the past decade, and New Jersey by 19 percent, while both states saw overall crime rates fall by similar rates as in Arizona and violent crime rates fall farther. Both states scaled back mandatory sentences for drug offenses and gave judges more discretion to send offenders into drug-treatment programs.

Mississippi, in 2008, brought back parole and scaled back mandatory sentences for a variety of non-violent offenses, retroactive to 1995. Over the next year, the state released more than 3,000 prisoners on parole an average of 13 months sooner, saving more than $40 million. Mississippi also saved roughly $12 million a year by expanding the use of home arrest with electronic monitoring. Its crime rate fell nearly 7 percent.

Many other states, including Georgia, Kansas, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina and South Carolina, have taken similar measures. Across the country, crime rates have been dropping for years, even as "we see an increasing trend of states turning to alternative sentencing measures and reforms," said Judith Greene, director of Justice Strategies, a non-profit group that studies incarceration policies. Like ASU's Pratt, she said the budget crisis has been an impetus; but with the declines in crime "people are a little less ready for the kinds of old, knee-jerk solutions proposed when crime was rising and people were feeling a desperation about what to do about it."

After peaking in October 2009 at just under 40,800, Arizona's prison population has dropped by about 700 inmates; officials say changes in probation practices are sending fewer people back to prison for minor infringements of probation.

Arizona's auditor general, in an audit last year, said the state could cut its prison growth by adopting sentencing reforms other states have put in place, and by expanding who is eligible for the diversion program voters created in 1996 through Proposition 200. Except for methamphetamine users, who are excluded, that proposition requires first- or second-time non-violent drug offenders to be put on probation and sent to a treatment program instead of prison. A 2006 Arizona Supreme Court study estimated this measure keeps more than 1,000 people a year out of prison, at an annual savings of about $11.7 million. ASU's Hessick said extending the program to meth possession could save $6 million a year more.

State legislator Ash said he plans to propose sentencing reforms again next session, for the fourth year in a row.

Report on the private-prison system

Read the documents
Arizona private-prison delay urged
Coolidge voices desire to land new prison
2010 escape at Kingman an issue for MTC's bid
La. firm says prison escapes led to changes
Private-prison bidder Geo's record an issue
Proposal to build private prison in Goodyear draws fire
Firm presents Arizona prison proposal
Arizona prison oversight lacking for private facilities
Kingman prison empty bed payments
Documents show security lapses in prisons
Public hearings on prison plans
State to expand private prisons
Kingman private prison slow to fix flaws
Arizona DOC faces systemwide security lapses

New AZ Juvenile Corrections Director: Charles Flanagan

For those receiving this via email: this is not new or revised - I had just taken it down to work on, but don't have time, so it's back up. Will post a new, separate piece on Flanagan's appointment once I can chat with him and take the time to write it up.

Peg

I seldom ever re-write blog posts, but sometimes new information or insight calls for a re-evaluation of my positions or strategies. In this case, time and reflection has compelled me to re-evaluate both. This is therefore a rewrite - the older version is gone.

Last week, Governor Jan Brewer announced the retirement of the current director of the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections, Michael Branham. This alone concerned me, as I knew he'd been resisting her desire to privatize the whole department. What concerned me more, however, is the naming of his replacement: current Deputy Director of the Arizona Department of Corrections, Charles Flanagan - the one man for whom I've had more animosity towards than his boss, Chuck Ryan.

My feelings about Deputy Director Flanagan are rooted in experiences I've had or been privy to behind the scenes that aren't necessary to detail here. What matters is that under his watch the homicide and suicide rates in the state prisons have skyrocketed. The ACLU is investigating the ADC's abuse and neglect of seriously mentally ill prisoners - all too often managed with solitary confinement, which has been shown to be especially harmful to the mental health of prisoners with pre-existing psychiatric disorders.


As an example of both the effects of solitary and the cruel mentality of the state: one young man I know of, Mark, set himself on fire in desperation after begging for a year to have a cellie or be re-classified to a different yard (out of SMU-I, which is where he was when he set himself on fire), the experience of exile and isolation was so tortuous for him. Characteristic of this administration, despite being burned over 80% of his body - arguably punishment enough for an apparent suicide attempt - the state prosecuted him for arson and gave him more time. Is it any wonder that the level of despair and violence has risen so high in there, when the most vulnerable and impaired prisoners are so brutally treated by the ADC as a matter of course?






Such responses to mentally ill prisoners already traumatized by the conditions of their confinement not only shows an institutional culture void of compassion, but also a lack of competency and creativity. Charles Flanagan may have only been in his current position for the past 2 1/2 years, but one of the cases made for his appointment as the new ADJC director is that he's been helping build the ADC into what it is all this time - he's a career soldier there. If he wants credit for that - as if it's something worth claiming - then he needs to take responsibility for where things have gone awry, too - the pattern of abuse and neglect emerging at the state prisons under this administration has been festering for decades under bureaucrats like Chuck Ryan and his mentor, Terry Stewart.


The degree to which Charles Flanagan is part of the same good old boys network at the ADC or part of the resistance to it has yet to be seen. Former ASPC-Eyman Deputy Warden Carl Toersbijns - who I respect immensely, for an officer of the law in this state - keeps trying to convince me that Flanagan is one of the "good guys". My own verdict came in on him long ago - but with new testimony and a look at the old evidence, I'm willing to give his case another look. I want the judiciary in this state to do the same more often for our prisoners with wrongful conviction claims, so I'll try to lead by example.

Still, a good many people have died while Deputy Director Flanagan has helped whitewash the festering conditions inside his prisons over the past couple of years. That's not for me to forgive - that's for those victims and survivors of prison violence and neglect to wrestle with. My job, as I see it, is to amplify their voices, their protest, their resistance to what's happened and continues to happen to Arizona's state prisoners under the current regime, not to give those already in power even more by giving them "equal" space or consideration in my blogs. They already have the benefit of the doubt from everyone else - I'm often the only one to present the other side.

So, while I'm open to Carl's version of the deputy director's role in things under Chuck Ryan, I'm not cutting Flanagan a break. He's responsible by his own claim to leadership there for where the ADC is now at this point in history. I just recognize that I'm not in a position myself to judge accurately what he's done behind the scenes on behalf of prisoners to counter the damage his boss' leadership through the years has done - that is, I'm not absolutely sure if he's part of the problem or part of the solution.

In either case, Charles Flanagan's going to be part of this whole system injustice for some time to come, since the ADJC feeds so many of its kids to the ADC when they're done "correcting" them. In light of that, I invited him to have a dialogue with me; that, after a year or so of having ADC General Counsel Karyn Klausner run interference between us because I simmered with rage at the thought of him (I can only imagine how he feels about me). He promptly and graciously accepted. We'll talk after he settles into his new job - assuming I'm not sidelined over my graffiti by then.

In the meantime, those of you who have questions for him about his term in the adult system or his vision for criminalized youth, please shoot them to me between now and July 1. I can't promise that they'll be answered, but I'll make sure that they're publicly asked. Let your friends and loved ones inside know the invitation extends to them as well, and have them write to me at:

Arizona Prison Watch
PO Box 20494
Phoenix, AZ 85036

I'd love to get some prisoner feedback to share with the community out here about this new appointment; put the word out that it would mean a lot to me what the guys who have seen Flanagan rise through the ranks have to say about his integrity and competency as a CO and administrator.

Anyone interested in following juvenile justice issues in Arizona and helping to maintain a new blog, Arizona Juvenile Prison Watch, please contact me as well.

Thanks.

The restoration of Jerry Kulp.

NOTE: I'm cross-posting this from AZ Prison Watch (originally posted 9/23/10) because Jerry was a child tried as an adult, who promptly suicided upon his arrival at the AZ State Prison minors unit in Tucson. This is terribly heartbreaking. I've since heard from his mom, who confirmed my suspicions about his psychiatric disability. - Peggy Plews
----------------------

I looked and looked this week for memories in the ether from Jerry Kulp's short life. All I could find were his court and ADC papers. Jerry was a 17-year old prisoner on the Minors Unit at ASPC-Tucson last May when he committed suicide.


Jerry hadn't even been in prison a week; he must have just been terrified. How could anyone on the Minors Unit miss all the signs he must have been broadcasting that he wasn't going to last long inside?


Jerry wasn't a gang member, from what I can tell. He was a seriously mentally ill child. He was given ten years upon pleading guilty to sexual assault, a crime I can't find the details of now. He was up on a number of other charges - armed robbery, kidnapping, etc. He committed them all on one occasion when he was 15.


At the time he was initially charged as an adult, Jerry was so mentally impaired that he required a guardian to make his legal decisions for him, and had to undergo several rounds of competency exams and "restoration treatment" in Joe's Jail over the course of 6-9 months to be fit for trial.


Does anyone else out there find that troubling? There seems to be a pattern here with mentally ill people being inappropriately prosecuted - kept in jail the whole time their trials are being postponed - (as if they already know that they're guilty and doing the time anyway) - while they medicate them into health. Once so restored, they promptly plead guilty and get sent to prison where they end up neglected or assaulted and killed.


I can't believe we prosecuted a mentally incompetent child as an adult, and then threw him into prison, but I guess we do that all the time. That can't possibly be legal. Why was this kid sent to prison instead of to a hospital, anyway? To teach him some kind of lesson? He seems to have suffered plenty enough. To scare the rest of us at his expense? No wonder we're so soul sick.


I'd like to speak to Jerry's friends and family, if you're out there. Some of us are organizing to make sure this doesn't keep happening to people like Jerry and me in Arizona's state prisons. My phone number is 480-580-6807. My email is prisonabolitionist@gmail.com. Peggy Plews.